Nantes is a city in western France. It has been implementing SPP since 2001, and together with Angers and the Loire region founded the Réseau Grand Ouest Public Procurement and Sustainable Development network.
 | 483k Population |
 | 4,600 Employees |
 | 2009 Date joined |
Nantes has been working on numerous initiatives in the field of responsible procurement since 2001, integrating it into wider environmental policy along the way, such as via the city's Sustainable Development Plan in 2004, and its Agenda 21 and Climate Plan adopted in 2009.
Nantes has also been working since 2010 with local stakeholders on the development of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) criteria for public procurement. This is supported by the CSR Platform, which brings together public and private actors to work towards responsible business practices, and provides a self-assessment tool which measures economic, social and environmental performance.
In 2017 a Responsible Purchasing Promotion Scheme (SPAR) was adopted to strengthen the coherence of the initiatives developed over the last 15+ years. SPAR presents 11 action sheets across different topics related to responsible procurement (covering responsible business models, social and environmental aspects), which highlight the strategic direction of the action, progress so far, and the operational and performance targets to be achieved by 2020.
FROM GREEN PROCUREMENT TO RESPONSIBLE CONSUMPTION This ranges from consumption reduction, recycling, consumption of tap water as opposed to bottled water, producing more durable products, considering recyclability, water recovery, recycling of ink cartridges (70% economy), planning staff travel, shredding green waste to using sawdust instead of water and herbicides.
SUPPLIER ENGAGEMENTA discussion panel has been created for fair-trade and sustainable procurement to provide a forum for procurers from both the public and private sector and institutional and association partners. It also brings together decision makers and procurers from the public and private sectors through events.
Seasonal products are encouraged and where this is not possible, imported products like coffee, tea, fruit juices and chocolate should be from fair trade sources. 11% of the food served in school canteens is biological and local. The biological products already introduced are: apples, milk, yoghurt, carrots, cabbages, dates, dry apricots and bread, as well as fair trade rice.
After the successful production promotional organic and fair-trade cotton t-shirts at the Rugby World Cup in autumn 2007, 90% of cotton t-shirts and sweatshirts (approximately 1000 pieces) worn by governmental officials are now from organic and fair-trade sources.
Beginning with 2013, 100% of the paper bought by the City public authority is from recycled sources (label Blue Angel).
The certification of sustainable forest management is required: PEFC timber for European wood products and FSC for exotic products. If the raw wood markets meet these requirements (from 70% in 2007 to 100% in 2012), much work remains to be done for wood products (40%).
For further information on the activities of Nantes visit their website:
or email procurement@iclei.org
